Free Range Family

Dare I say it? Dare I say that spring is here? I am afraid that if I post it on here, tomorrow morning we may wake up to snow! Montana weather is just wild like that in March lol! Hopefully now that its almost April, we will finally be done with all the darn winter weather! Because even though I was raised a snow bunny, I am ready for spring and summer to be here! Today was gorgeous out! It was a chilly 32 degrees outside but the sun was out and shining! It felt wonderful compared to the awful cold days we have been having recently! I had to get the kids out in this amazing weather! So we left the front door open while we had lunch today, letting the nice fresh air and sun come in, then after lunch we went to the park to play until Lon was off of work! It was just fantastic! I couldn't decide if I wanted to go to Pioneer Park or Rose Park, so I asked Alan's opinion. He thought that Rose Park would be better and since it was in the area of where we were meeting up with Lon af...

We have had such a slow few weeks. Haven't really been able to do anything. Its so terribly mundane, it feels like we are walking through a bog. Everything goes so slowly and there's so much to do but it never all gets done. Blah, I have been trying my best to keep posting on here, but I will miss a whole week sometimes! I'm sorry. :) Its finally starting to seem like spring out though, which is nice! And last week I was awarded the Tumble 1 and 2 gymnastics teacher position. I am quite excited to be in charge of this program now, and have some BIG plans for the program. How was your Saint Patty's Day? I know its a little late lol, but I am just getting around to posting this! :P Ours wasn't the most exciting but it was still a great day! We didn't really differ too much from our usual Monday schedule but the kids picked out their green in their outfits, we made shamrocks in daycare and then we celebrated with green cookies for dessert from the Leprechan! It w...

My family just loves fall! Its our favorite season! The colors, the corn mazes, the weather, the pumpkin patches, Halloween, Thanksgiving, we just love it all! I must say this about every season lol, I guess we just like change in our surroundings. :) I love each season really, they all have wonderful aspects that I look forward to each year! I'm sure we will be saying the same thing about the winter season too. I think that maybe we are just Montanans and just really  love Mother Nature lol. :) But we definitely are enjoying THIS season right now! Yesterday, it was rainy and a little bit chilly outside. But the kids were very restless inside, we tried playing games and reading books, doing artwork together. No go! On a whim, we bundled up and went outside to play despite the weather! A little bit of rain never hurt no one lol! :) I need to start remembering to take advantage of certain things while we are staying here, like the big kid friendly backyard my parents have. Its a ...

We woke up this morning to find a nice blanket of snow covering everything, for like the third time this month lol! So much for my holiday plans, darn! We were going to go to Norm's Island today and go on a nature hike. I also had plans to finish the yardwork and plant the last of our flowers. This will probably not happen in the snow with a potty training preschooler and a babe. We are watching Disney movies all day to make up for it. Le sigh... whatevs Mother Nature, if you want to be a drama queen today, then that's fine! You had just better behave on Arbor Day, I won't take no gruff from you then! :) This weekend wasn't too crazy. My family was out of state for Aunt April's dance competition and workshop, but I did have my bosses' baby shower I helped decorate for. She is having twins, a boy and a girl, around the same time Aunt Natalie is. The party was rubber ducky themed, which I thought was adorable! I loved the color palette: blue, pink, purple an...

I do not have a lot to type today. We have been slightly broke lately and thus have not done too much outside of the house. Not to mention that not having a phone makes things a little more difficult lol. But I make do. :) We have been going outside more, reading more stories, making more crafts and just loving our life more. You definitely do not need money for that! Thankfully though, this weekend I was invited to join my mother to the Fringe Festival, a festival downtown supporting Venture Theatre. Lon watched the kids for me and I got to go out and have a little fun, so to speak lol. I even dressed the part, putting on my favorite skirt and thigh length rainbow socks, looking pretty fly. :) Aunt April was performing with her group and another dance troupe. It was quite interesting to say the least and got me thinking about some things... Dancing, life, art and inspiration basically. It brought me to this thought. Where do I get most of my inspiration from? Having been an arti...

Our Earth Day this year was lots of fun! After speaking with my mother, my plans changed slightly but that only made it easier for us to spend more time at each place rather than rush through everything. We woke up relatively early and had a small breakfast of waffles, donuts and fruit. Then Lon and I packed my tiny little car full of all of our recyclables and we headed to the recycling center. If you remember, I had called ahead to see if someone would do a little impromptu tour for us so that Alan could learn some as well. Well the tour was pretty cool, they showed us the whole recycling process that they do on a daily basis. They asked that I didn't take any pictures but we had a great learning experience! Alan's favorite part was dumping all the recyclables on the moving track to be weighed and processed. We recycled so much too! If I remember right, we recycled over four pounds of plastic materials, ten pounds of glass materials and seven pounds of aluminum cans. That...

Thursday, I watched a documentary on PBS called Nature's Child. It was about nature and how it affects and benefits childhood development. Of course being the hippie that I am, I already knew this lol. But it was still a very interesting show to watch and I learned quite a bit from it. In this day and age, most children spend their time indoors either on the computer or at the television. Gradually, less and less children are spending quality time outside. If they do get outside, it is either at school during recess or for an organized sport. While these are also good development teachers, they are not enough. Children need to play outside in their neighborhoods, like we all did as kids. But this is happening less and less. Why is this, you ask? Well there is one theory that I have found to be pretty feasible. Some believe that modern day parents are being conditioned by the media to be afraid to let their children play outside in the neighbor, whether by themselves or with other...

Earth Day is this Sunday and though we don't have too much planned for that day, I have a couple fun activities for us to partake in. First, I will be posting a blog post on here about children and the benefits nature has on their development that day. It is based off of a PBS show I watched yesterday and my own hippie naturalist opinions lol. I encourage you to stop by and read it! :) For Alan and I, I have developed a nature scavenger hunt that we will be doing at hopefully several different parks. It asks for fun things like pine cones, seeds, beetles (we have little containers to catch them) and mushrooms. I hope that we can go to Zimmerman Park, Pioneer Park and Riverfront Park at least. Maybe even Phipp's Park if we have the time. :) Then I plan on taking Alan and all of our recyclable stuff down to Pacific Recycling to teach Alan a lesson about recycling. We have been recycling aluminum cans, plastic and glass for almost a year now but its been a few months sinc...

And I am saying this with the upmost respect and love lol. But... Has anyone noticed the crazy weather lately? It started with the snowless December (we had a Brown Christmas, very disappointed), continued with the bipolar snowy and nice weather throughout January and went straight through with the 60 degree February. Well now that its March, the weather is supposed to start getting nice right lol? Maybe. Yesterday was a beautiful 60 degree day. Today however, looks like this: Today Yesterday I took Alan to the park, we played on the playground. Yesterday Today Yesterday Alan slid down slide after slide, squealing with joy in the beautiful sunny weather. Yesterday Today Yesterday we explored what Alan called the "big scary bridges" while the breeze kept us nice and cool. I was so proud he was doing them! Yesterday Today It hasn't stopped snowing since I took this picture of my front yard either. *Sigh* Guess it was a good thing we went to the park yes...